


Bathed in the Quiet

by Notmycatsname



Series: Introduction [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: ADHD Remus Lupin, American AU, Chinese Sirius Black, Coffee Shop, College AU, Dialogue Heavy, Discussions of Identity, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, discussions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:14:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29560338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notmycatsname/pseuds/Notmycatsname
Summary: "Sirius just stares at him, the crinkle of laughter by his eyes, the bruises on his neck, the way his teeth poke through even in a closed-mouth grin. “I like you.”“The highest compliment,” Remus says softly and there’s something in the tone of his voice that lets Sirius know that he really means it."
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: Introduction [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2171736
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51





	Bathed in the Quiet

There are no blinds in Remus’s bedroom. It didn’t make much of a difference last night. Sirius actually thought the neon glow from the pizza place down below gave the bedroom a dream-like quality. Especially the way it highlighted the curves and ridges of Remus’s face and body. It doesn’t seem quite so romantic now though, the bright light streaming through the window as Sirius burrows further under the blankets. The two of them are crammed together on the bed and Sirius leans into Remus’s warmth, avoiding his knobby knees and pointy elbows. 

“My fucking head hurts,” Sirius grumbles into the pillow as he squeezes his eyes shut. Remus walks his fingers across Sirius’s scalp, taps gently at his temples. 

“You think that’s because of the shitty subpar music or the half a beer you drank?”

Sirius blinks his eyes open slowly. Remus is propped up on his elbows, hair even messier than it was the night before with purple bite marks on his neck. He wants to kiss him but he’s also fairly sure they both smell and taste awful. “More likely because of your big bony head. This bed is tiny and you’re, like, full of bones.” Sirius shuts his eyes again and rests his head on Remus’s chest. 

His head shakes a little as Remus laughs. “I am full of bones, I’ll give you that one, I guess.” He starts up again on trailing his fingers around Sirius’s head down onto his shoulders. Sirius shivers a little at the press of his rough fingertips on his bare skin. 

“Why don’t you have any blinds in here? Curtains, bed sheets, anything?” He grabs Remus’s hand and places it over his own eyes, shielding himself from the sunlight but Remus just pinches his nose shut instead. 

“This is the only bedroom in the apartment with a window.” His voice is soft in the morning and it makes Sirius feel a way that he doesn’t think he wants to put words to yet. “I beat out Marlene, Dorcas, and Caradoc for this room, I’m going to enjoy the fucking sunlight.”

“You all have such weird names, why can’t one of you just be John or Ashley or something.”

Remus just pokes his fingers into Sirius’s side as he slides out from under him. “Alright _Sirius._ ” Sirius blinks his eyes open and squints in the sunlight to see Remus giving him a soft, sweet little smile and he wants to pull him back into the too-small bed. “Come on, coffee time.” Remus pushes back the covers and trudges over to his dresser. Sirius had nearly forgotten they were both naked. He watches now as Remus digs through the drawers for fresh clothes. He has a sort of lanky frame, not really muscular enough to be twinky. But then Sirius thinks of him last night, spread out underneath him or bent over his cock and he feels the heat of arousal flood through him looking at his awkward, gangly form. And when he turns back around to face him, well…

“Hey! Coffee time.” Remus leaps onto the bed, landing heavily on Sirius’s stomach and knocks the wind out of him. “You can look at my dick _after_ coffee time.” He’s grinning and Sirius scoops him forward so that Remus is perched on his chest and bent forward so that they’re nose to nose. 

“After?” He tries to blink his eyes innocently up at him but he’s sure the effect is marred by how his hips twitch forward towards Remus’s weight of their own accord. He tangles a hand in Remus’s hair and pulls him down into a kiss. He was right. Their mouths are both sour and they still stink of yesterday but Sirius just mutters against Remus’s lips that he should breathe through his mouth instead as he takes them both in hand. 

The rest of the inhabitants of the apartment are still, thankfully, asleep so they manage to creep out of the apartment without having to speak to anyone. There’s another little coffee shop a couple of blocks from the apartment, not the one from the night before. Sirius admits that he’s not really a fan of the coffee from that place and Remus says he doesn’t like to revisit the same place twice in a twenty-four hour period. Sirius catalogues that fact with the rest of the odd little things he’s learned about Remus: how none of his socks match, that he keeps a two-liter of Dr. Pepper in his bedroom, his habit of picking off the chipped polish on his fingernails. 

It’s still fairly early for Sunday in a college town so they jay-walk across streets, holding hands while Sirius works his way through a cigarette and Remus kicks rock down the sidewalk the whole way. 

“Did you know I have asthma?” Remus asks as he corrals the rock back out of the street.

“This bother you then?” Sirius turns his head to blow smoke away from him.

Remus just shakes his head. “No. My dad used to smoke, I sort of like the smell. Reminds me of sitting in the smoking section of a Bob Evans.” Another fact added to the list. 

They sit at a table off in the corner of the coffee shop. Sirius makes Remus order for the both of them and laughs when he comes back to the table with two pumpkin spice lattes and some banana bread.

“Alright but have you had one of these before,” Remus's voice is accusatory as he takes his cup in both hands and breathes in the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg and what Sirius reminds him is definitely _not_ pumpkin. “I don’t care about the stereotypes or the hate, this is my next-morning post-show treat and I will enjoy it.”

Sirius takes a hesitant sip and scrunches his nose at the sweetness but he actually does sort of like it. He will not admit that to Remus. “Do you come here a lot?” He tears off some banana bread and tosses it in his mouth.

“I do not have the money to come here a lot,” Remus says as he sits back in his chair. “I’m really pulling out all the stops for you. You better be impressed.” He’s got that snarky little grin on again and Sirius tries to decide if he likes that one better or the soft smile he gave him bundled up in his bed together. It might be a tie. 

“I’m truly wowed.” He nudges Remus’s chair with his boot and hooks their ankles together. “Wow me some more, Remus. I know next to nothing about you and I’m ready to be impressed.” Remus just snorts and Sirius tangles their fingers together. “What’s your major?”

Remus ducks his head a little and Sirius delights in the little blush across his cheeks, the bridge of his nose. “You wanna guess?”

“Oh, are you fucking kidding?” Sirius leans forward onto the table. “It’s fucking English, isn’t it?” Remus rubs his eyes with his hands and nods. 

“English education, yeah.”

Sirius just shakes his head, a huge smile on his lips. “Fucking perfect, of course it it. Truly, you’re amazing.” Remus’s face is a bright red and his shoulders shake a little in suppressed laughter. “English education,” Sirius says to himself, stroking his thumb across the back of Remus’s hand. “I can see you now in those horrible painter's overalls I saw in your closet and a beanie, teaching first graders about _The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”_ The mental picture delights Sirius really more than he’d like to admit. He’s adorable, Sirius thinks, as Remus tries to straighten his face enough to level a disappointed gaze at him. It doesn’t work. 

“Not first graders, I don’t want to be around kids that young.” Remus fakes a shudder and takes another sip of his coffee. “No, I’m planning more, like, junior high, maybe middle school.”

“You didn’t really strike me as a kids person. I had you pegged for being some morose poet, with like a typewriter and everything.”

Remus snorts. “No, there is a reason Marlene writes most of our songs. No poetry for me.”

“Why kids then?”

He hums a little in thought, taps his fingers on the table. “I have ADHD. I was diagnosed when I was eleven. So there’s been a lot of things that I was told that I just...couldn’t do? By teachers, especially, who just didn’t want to put up with a fidgeting little queer kid. Like, I was gonna have a hard time in high school once we didn’t get a recess, I was gonna have a miserable time in college when I was more independent, how am I ever gonna get a job if I can’t stop picking at things and hyper-fixating and -” He waves his hand a little to encompass everything else. Sirius nods and watches as Remus’s eyes dart a little around the room.

“And like, yes, high school was hard, college is hard. I have a fucking three hour course Wednesday nights that I can hardly sit through, I will lose four hours researching California Redwoods and forget to eat, I have a hard time focusing when professors just lecture without anything to look at. But I’m here and I’m doing it.” He shrugs and looks a little embarrassed. Sirius squeezes his hand, tries to let him know that he _knows_ how hard it can be to share these things about yourself, especially on a first date with yesterday’s hook-up. He likes this genuine Remus just as much as the playful, clever one. 

“Anyway,” Remus says with an awkward smile, “I wanna, I guess, be what I didn’t have, if that makes sense?” Sirius hums his understanding, his agreement. “It’s also hard for a lot of kids with less resources to like...see a version of themselves as a successful adult. And I feel stupid even saying that because I’m a white, cis-adjacent guy, there’s plenty of representation for me.”

“Yeah, but your also a neurodivergent queer guy. You can’t discount your own struggles just because they’re not the worst out there. You’re aware of your privilege. Cis-adjacent?”

Remus takes a sip of his coffee and shrugs again. “I don’t know, identity is a curse.” He leans back in his chair and fixes Sirius with a raised eyebrow, crooked smile on his lips. “Alright, tell me about yourself now. I fucking hate talking about myself, I always feel like I...just...word vomit.”

“I really like hearing about you so I’m gonna bully you if you feel bad about it. I’m double majoring. History and sociology. I, uh,” now Sirius lets out an awkward laugh, “I wanna be a history professor.”

Remus looks at him a little dumbfounded for a few seconds before chuckling. “I did not take you for the type that would want to brave academia, Mr. ‘I Hate Whiny Men.’ Fuck, especially for _history._ Also that's just as much as a stuck-up liberal arts as English so I will take no more bashing."

“That’s why I wanna do it though. White capitalist America has morphed history to such a crazy extent that we’re just teaching propaganda at this point. We focus on the things that hurt white people, spend a full two-weeks on the Salem Witch Trials but any actual government enforced persecution of minorities gets like, a day at most. And even that gets an ideology pushed on it. Like, I had a teacher in high-school look me in the eyes and tell me that the Chinese Exclusion Acts were justified. ‘People were scared.’” Sirius scoffs and kicks at the table. Remus is giving him this genuine look of interest and Sirius is taken aback almost by the eye contact, by his big hazel eyes staring at him head-on. 

“So,” Sirius continues, “it’s a lot of what you said, I guess. Just being able to see yourself instead of the people who put you down as a kid.”

“Why college though? There’s more freedom there, for sure but I feel like a lot of what kids learn, especially in history, are sort of brainwashed into them at middle school, high school.”

“The freedom is a part of it, for sure but I think that there’s also an openness in a lot of college students. The independence can turn a lot of us into little shit heads but I also think we’re just learning about life firsthand for the first time.”

“Are you gonna start rhapsodizing on ‘young minds?’” Remus has that shit-eating grin back on his lips and Sirius wants to wipe it off with a kiss or a handful of banana bread smushed into his mouth. He settles for the latter. Remus sputters and bites down on the meat of Sirius’s palm in retaliation. “You’re making a scene,” he mutters with as much dignity a person with banana bread smeared on his face could muster. Sirius smiles at him warmly as he wipes it off.

“Kids kinda freak me out though,” Sirius admits. “All sticky and smelly. And high school was absolute shit for me, I think I’d have a panic attack if I went back there. Academia is all privileged bullshit but maybe I can infiltrate it from the inside. Pose as a cool, hip, straight guy who’s gonna teach you about the Industrial Revolution and bam! Teach the students about institutionalized, systemic, normalized prejudice and how that’s become normalized and infused into our culture.”

“It’s cute that you think you’re straight-passing,” Rems mutters and if there were any more bread left Sirius would stuff it down his shirt.

Instead he just stares at him, the crinkle of laughter by his eyes, the bruises on his neck, the way his teeth poke out from behind his lips even in a closed-mouth grin. “I like you.” 

“The highest compliment,” Remus says softly and there’s something in the tone of his voice that lets Sirius know that he really means it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> notmycatsname on tumblr


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